


not a softie

by Urge



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Wolverine - Freeform, logan is a huge softie, logan is good with kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 20:22:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6822559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Urge/pseuds/Urge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wolverine used to be feared, goddammit, why can't the kids get it through their thick skulls that he's dangerous?</p>
            </blockquote>





	not a softie

Logan had been having A Night.

Surprising exactly no-one except Julie, a five-year-old who had been at Professor Xavier’s for less than a month, two boys and a girl had tried to sneak out of their rooms and off-campus to try to play blackjack at a local casino – with her ability to sweet-talk her way out of trouble, and one of the boy’s extreme speed, they knew that they could get out if they got in trouble. And then, surprising even less people, chaos had broken out, with another mutant barging into the establishment, taking three hostages, and attempting to hold the place up.

Naturally, the three teens couldn’t let that slide. Naturally, they just had to fight the bad guy. And get themselves taken hostage, all except for the fast kid. Well, fast was the wrong word. He could burst himself into new places, instantaneously, but he had to be seeing where he was going to be accurate. Well, he had burst himself onto the roof of the mansion, then woke everyone up screaming as he fell down the slippery tiles.

One broken arm and many broken baddies later, Logan still hadn’t gotten any sleep and had to grade three more papers before he had to teach his first class. So if he was glaring at his bowl of corn flakes with the intensity of Scott Summers, well, sue him. Big whoop.

Julie wandered up to him, holding a mangled version of a ragdoll. Maybe her name was Pollyanna? Logan couldn’t remember, he didn’t tell the little girls stories. All he was good for was acting out pirates and Paul Bunyan at story time, for he was notoriously bad at princesses. “Mr. Wolfie,” she lisped, air whistling out between her teeth in what he shouldn’t be thinking was adorable but he was too tired to care, “awe you okay? Do you want to hold Powwyanne” (close enough) “fow a few minutes whiwe you eat?”

Logan stared at her, no change in his expression. This staring contest continued for several minutes before Julie simply reached up and placed the doll in his lap. “Keep him safe, Powwyanne,” she sternly told the doll, and walked away to her high chair at the long table in the alcove. Logan’s eyebrows shot up. A doll, keep him safe?

He was about to say as much when he caught a teenager’s eye from across the island. The girl was shaking her head, blue hair ruffled up in the back and eyeliner purposefully smudged. She waved her hand and sparkling writing popped up. Right, this one specialized in illusions. The words she had summoned told him all that he needed to know – Julie was a promising prospect in the world of casting spells based on the power of life that she talked into things, and it’s likely that Pollyanne, for all the stuffing that she was missing, could probably take out at least three of Magneto’s lesser cronies. Logan glanced over to the table.

Julie was currently talking to a box of Captain Crunch. The Captain was talking back. Logan swallowed, noting that he should remember Julie. “What else can you do, kid?” he asked the teen in front of him. She glanced up from her bacon, a little startled. Logan couldn’t blame her, he usually didn’t talk until at least nine in the morning, and definitely not before he had had his ham.

“Uh, sir?” she asked, brows furrowed. Her military parentage shone through in how she straightened unconsciously before she addressed him, words crisp and efficient.

“You heard me, uh…”

“Dany, sir. Danielle. I’m pretty… I’m pretty good environments, but I have some trouble with the wind moving things.”

“Show me, don’t tell me, Dany.”

She flushed, and put down the strip of meat she had been holding. She pushed both hands in front of her, and suddenly, Logan was standing in a frosty Canadian forest. He could smell the thick fir in the air, pulling him deeper into the illusion. He touched a tree – cold, rough, everything a tree should be – but there was no subtle creaking of the tops, no rustling in the needles. “I see what you mean, Dany. What do you think’s the hangup?”

She stepped from between two thick trunks, boots crunching in the snow. “I think that I just don’t pay attention to it enough in real life to know how to illustrate it accurately, sir.”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not your father, or the Professor, I’m just a guy that heals well and has metal bones.”

“You’re my teacher, sir, I’m not gonna be able to call you anything other than sir.”

Logan grunted, waved his hand. “Can I go back to my cereal now? Got a feelin’ it’s getting soggy.”

Dany’s face fell minutely, and she crossed her arms in an ‘x’. The illusion fell away in a shower of glittering sand, and she started to turn away.

“And ask the Professor to set up a few field trips with Ororo to get you familiar with winds. She’ll know how to treat you right up with that,” he muttered, staring resolutely at his food, definitely not at all seeing the grin that lit up her face out of the corner of his eye, nope. He heard the door close, and looked down at the doll in his lap. It had shifted to look up at him. “Don’t you judge me,” he growled. “I’m a teacher, that’s what that was. I was teaching.”

He tucked his spoon back into the corn flakes, and had barely started to chew before he felt eyes boring into the back of his head. “Kid, those gamma eyes of yours won’t actually let you see my thoughts. They might just make my hair fall off.”

“Sorry, Logan, but I was just trying to figure out why Julie’s doll was using your arm as a jungle gym,” Ralph said from his elbow.

“It what-” Logan looked down, saw said doll attempting to use his bicep as a handhold, and shook his head, casting a baleful stare up to the ceiling. When did this happen? People used to be afraid of him. All people, not just adults. The kids just saw him as a huge softie now. He was not.

Professor Xavier’s voice rang through the house – or their heads, whatever – telling everyone that they had ten minutes before class started. Logan sighed. He still hadn’t finished those last few papers.

If he ended up giving the entire class high grades, well. It only helped to cement his status as one of the nicest teachers at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.


End file.
